The concept of gaze (often also called the gaze or, in French, le regard), in analysing visual culture, is one that deals with how an audience views the people presented. Hieronymus Bosch ( Dutch, born Jeroen Anthonissen van Aken c 1450 &ndash August 9, 1516) was an Early Netherlandish Visual culture is a field of study that generally includes some combination of Cultural studies, Art history, critical theory philosophy and Anthropology Brooklyn Book Festival crowd by David Shankbonejpg|thumb|An audience at the Brooklyn Book Festival in New York City. The concept of the gaze became popular with the rise of postmodern philosophy and social theory and was first discussed by 1960s French intellectuals, namely Michel Foucault's description of the medical gaze and Lacan's analysis of the gaze's role in the mirror stage development of the human psyche. Postmodernism literally means 'after the modernist movement' While " Modern " itself refers to something "related to the present" the movement of modernism The 1960s decade refers to the years from the beginning of 1960 to the end of 1969 This article is about the country For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic France topics. An intellectual (from the adjective meaning "involving thought and reason" is a person who tries to use his or her Intelligence and analytical thinking, Michel Foucault ( (15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984 was a French philosopher, Historian, Intellectual, Critic and Sociologist. The term medical gaze was coined by French philosopher and critic Michel Foucault in his book The Birth of the Clinic (1963 (trans Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan (French ʒak lakɑ̃ ( April 13, 1901 &ndash September 9, 1981) was a French Psychoanalyst The Mirror stage was the subject of Jacques Lacan 's first official contribution to Psychoanalytic theory (Fourteenth International Psychoanalytical Congress at In Psychoanalysis, the psyche (ˈsaɪki refers to the forces in an individual that influence thought, Behavior and Personality. This concept is extended in the framework of feminist theory, where it can deal with how men look at women, how women look at themselves and other women, and the effects surrounding this. Feminism is a discourse that involves various movements theories, and Philosophies which are concerned with the issue of Gender difference, advocate A man is a Male Human. The term man (irregular plural In addition, the concept of the "normative gaze" is used by critical theorists such as Cornel West to describe the way in which the idea of Eurocentric racial identity provides the lens through which other races are viewed and socially constructed. Cornel Ronald West (born June 2, 1953) is a Scholar, Public intellectual, Philosopher, Critic, Pastor, Laura Mulvey criticized such gazes (in films) as "male". Laura Mulvey (born August 15, 1941) was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. Arising in the context of artistic practice, psychoanalysis and French feminism, Bracha Ettinger's notion of the feminine "matrixial gaze" contributes to the contemporary debates concerning the gaze in art. Psychoanalysis is a body of ideas developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and his followers which is devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behavior Feminism is a discourse that involves various movements theories, and Philosophies which are concerned with the issue of Gender difference, advocate Bracha L Ettinger (born 1951 also known as Bracha Ettinger, Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, Hebrew ברכה אטינגר, ברכה ליכטנברג-אטינגר Art refers to a diverse range of Human activities creations and expressions that are appealing to the Senses or Emotions of a human individual
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Forms of gaze
The gaze can be characterised by who is doing the looking:
- The spectator's gaze: the spectator who is viewing the text. Théodore Géricault ( September 26, 1791 &ndash January 26, 1824) was an important French painter and lithographer known for TEXT is the band founded by Kristofer Steen David Sandström Fredrik Bäckström and Jon F Brännström This is often us, the audience of a certain text. Brooklyn Book Festival crowd by David Shankbonejpg|thumb|An audience at the Brooklyn Book Festival in New York City.
- Intra-diegetic gaze, where one person depicted in the text is looking at another person or object in the text, such as one character looking at another. Diegesis is the (fictional world in which the situations and events narrated occur and telling recounting as opposed to showing enacting
- Extra-diegetic gaze, where the person depicted in the text looks at the spectator, such as an aside, or an acknowledgement of the fourth wall. The fourth wall is the imaginary wall at the front of the stage in a Proscenium Theater, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play
- The camera's gaze, which is the gaze of the camera, and is often equated to the director's gaze. A camera is a device used to capture images either as still Photographs or as sequences of moving images ( Movies or Videos.
These are not the only forms of gaze. Other forms include the gaze of an audience within a "text within the text", such as Lisa Simpson and Bart Simpson watching the cartoon-within-a-cartoon Itchy and Scratchy on The Simpsons, or editorial gaze, whereby a certain aspect of the text is given emphasis, such as in photography, where a caption or a cropping of an image depicting one thing can emphasize a completely different idea. Lisa Marie Simpson is a Fictional character in the animated Television series The Simpsons and is voiced by Yeardley Smith. Bartholomew J "Bart" Simpson is a character in the animated television series The Simpsons The Itchy & Scratchy Show is a segment or "side-show" featured on The Simpsons which usually appears as a portrayal of the fictional Photography (fә'tɒgrәfi or fә'tɑːgrәfi (from Greek φωτο and γραφία is the process and Art of recording pictures by means of capturing
Other theorists such as Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen provide the idea of the gaze as a relationship between offering and demanding gaze: indirect gaze is an offer by the spectator, where we initiate the gaze, and the subject is not aware of this, and direct gaze is a demand by the subject, who looks at us, demanding our gaze.
Gaze can also be further categorised into the direction of the gaze, where the subjects are looking at each other, apart, at the same object, or where one is gazing at another who is gazing at something else.
Effects of gaze
Gazing and seeing someone gaze upon another provides us with a lot of information about our relationship to the subjects, or the relationships between the subjects upon whom we gaze, or the situation in which the subjects are doing the gazing.
The mutuality of the gaze can reflect power structure, or the nature of a relationship between the subjects, as proposed by Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins, where this "tell[s] us who has the right and/or need to look at whom". Power is a measure of a person's ability to control the environment around them including the behavior of other people
Although it may appear that "gaze" is merely looking at, Jonathan Schroeder tells us that "it signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze". The gaze characterizes and displays the relationships between the subjects by looking.
This idea forms a basis of feminist analysis of texts.
Gaze and feminist theory
Laura Mulvey, in her essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", introduced the concept of the gaze as a symptom of power asymmetry, hypothesizing about what she called the "male gaze. Laura Mulvey (born August 15, 1941) was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. Feminist film theory is theoretical Film criticism derived from Feminist politics and Feminist theory. " The theory of the male gaze has been hugely influential in feminist film theory and in media studies. Feminist film theory is theoretical Film criticism derived from Feminist politics and Feminist theory. Media studies is a collection of academic programs regarding the content history meaning and effects of various media.
The defining characteristic of the male gaze is that the audience is forced to regard the action and characters of a text through the perspective of a heterosexual man; the camera lingers on the curves of the female body, and events which occur1 to women are presented largely in the context of a man's reaction to these events. The male gaze denies women agency, relegating them to the status of objects. Agency is a Philosophical concept of the capacity of an agent to act in a world The female reader or viewer must experience2 the narrative secondarily, by identification with the male.
Mulvey's essay was one of the first to articulate the idea that sexism can exist not only in the content of a text, but in the way that text is presented, and in its implications about its expected audience.
Some theorists also have noted the degrees to which persons are encouraged to gaze upon women in advertising, sexualizing the female body even in situations where female body has nothing to do with the product being advertised. Advertising is a form of Communication that typically attempts to persuade potential Customers to Purchase or to consume more of a particular Brand
1. It is worth noting a distinction between an event and amalgamation of abstract causes, i. e. , things, directions, responses.
2. It is worth noting that experience is not required to participate in the culture; socio-contextuality will pertain more from the vantage of lawfulness over its transpersonal regards.
Responses to "male gaze"
Male gaze in relation to feminist theory presents asymmetrical gaze as a means of exhibiting an unequal power relationship; that is, the male imposes an unwanted gaze upon the female. While some argue that women who fit the ideal of female beauty enjoy this gaze, many second-wave feminists would argue whether these women are actually willing, noting that they may be merely seeking to conform to the hegemonic norms constructed to the benefit of male interests that further underline the power of the male gaze. Hegemony (hɨˈdʒɛməni (Amer /hɨˈɡɛməni/ (Brit (ἡγεμονία hēgemonía) is a concept that has been used to describe and explain the dominance of one social (see also exhibitionism)
The question of whether a female gaze exists to a meaningful extent in contrast to the male one arises naturally in considering the male gaze. Although the implications of each may overlap in special circumstances generally exhibitionism is not to be confused with Indecent exposure. Mulvey, the originator of the phrase "male gaze", argues that "the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification. Man is reluctant to gaze. . . ". Nalini Paul describes Wide Sargasso Sea, where the character Antoinette views Rochester and places a garland upon him to appear as a hero, and "Rochester does not feel comfortable with having this role enforced upon him; thus he rejects it by removing the garland and crushing the flowers. Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 postcolonial Parallel novel by Dominica -born author Jean Rhys. A hero (from Greek grc ἥρως hērōs) in Greek mythology and Folklore, was originally a Demigod, the offspring of a mortal and "
In the perspective of male gaze as merely possessing a gaze, the position of a female possessing the gaze is then the female assuming the male gaze. Eva-Maria Jacobsson supports this by describing a "female gaze" as "a mere cross identification with masculinity".
However, disregarding the viewpoint of gendered possession of gaze as proposed by Mulvey above, there is evidence to support a view of a female gaze — at least as an objectification of men — in texts such as advertisements and teen magazines. Teen magazines are Magazines aimed at younger teenage readers and usually in the female gender
The gaze can also be directed toward members of the same gender for several reasons, not all of which are sexual, such as in comparison of body image or in clothing. Body image is a term which may refer to the Perceptions of a human's own Physical appearance, or the internal sense of having a body which is interpreted by the brain Clothing (also called clothes, accoutrements, accouterments, or habiliments) protects the Human body from extreme Weather
Gaze and psychoanalysis
The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, an early and influential theorist of child development, found the concept of the gaze important in what he termed "the mirror stage", whereupon children gaze at a mirror image of themselves (usually an image of themselves in an actual mirror, but a twin brother or sister can also function as a mirror image) and use this image to derive a degree of coordination over their physical movements. Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan (French ʒak lakɑ̃ ( April 13, 1901 &ndash September 9, 1981) was a French Psychoanalyst Child development refers to the biological and psychological changes that occur in human beings between birth and the end of Adolescence, as the individual A mirror is an object with a surface that has good Specular reflection; that is it is smooth enough to form an Image. Twins are Offspring resulting from the same Pregnancy, either of the same or opposite Sex. Lacan therefore linked the concept of the gaze to the development of individual human agency. Agency is a Philosophical concept of the capacity of an agent to act in a world To this end, he transformed the concept of the gaze into a dialectic between what he called the ideal-ego and the ego-ideal. iDEAL is an Internet payment method in The Netherlands, based on online banking Id, ego, and super-ego are the three parts of the " Psychic apparatus " defined in Sigmund Freud 's structural model of The ideal-ego is the image of imaginary self-identification - in other words, the idealized image that the person imagines themselves to be or aspires to be; whilst the ego-ideal is the imaginary gaze of another person who gazes upon the ideal-ego. An example would be if a famous rockstar (a category of identification which would function as the ideal-ego) secretly hoped that the school bully who tormented them as a child was now aware of his or her subsequent success and fame (with the imaginary, fantasmatic figure of the bully functioning as the ego-ideal). Rock and roll (also known as rock 'n' roll) is a form of Music that evolved in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s with roots in mostly African A celebrity is a widely-recognized or famous person who commands a high degree of public and media attention
Lacan later developed his concept of the gaze even further, claiming that the gaze does not belong to the subject but, rather, the object. In his Seminar One, he told his audience: "I can feel myself under the gaze of someone whose eyes I do not see, not even discern. All that is necessary is for something to signify to me that there may be others there. This window, if it gets a bit dark, and if I have reasons for thinking that there is someone behind it, is straight-away a gaze" (Lacan, 1988, p. 215).
Starting from 1985, the artist and psychoanalyst Bracha L. Ettinger has developed the idea of the "matrixial gaze" based upon her articulation of particular feminine subjectivizing processes, patterned upon the real of pregnancy conceived as a shareable unconscious "borderspace" for affective, phantasmatic and traumatic differentiation in co-emergence and co-fading of partial subjects in jointness. Bracha L Ettinger (born 1951 also known as Bracha Ettinger, Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, Hebrew ברכה אטינגר, ברכה ליכטנברג-אטינגר The idea of the matrixial gaze has opened a new horizon for thinking aesthetics and ethics from the angle of feminine subjectivizing agency. The art historians Griselda Pollock and Catherine de Zegher developed readings of art history and contemporary art based on Ettinger's notion of matrixial gaze and screen. Griselda Pollock (born 1949) is a prominent art historian and cultural analyst and a world-renowned scholar of international post-colonial feminist studies in the In the 2000s, Ettinger developed also the idea of a primary aesthetical affect she has named "fascinance" (in opposition to Lacan's "fascinum"), by which the infant has psychic access and primary knowledge of the other and the world. Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan (French ʒak lakɑ̃ ( April 13, 1901 &ndash September 9, 1981) was a French Psychoanalyst This is a creative and transformational gaze.
See also
References
- Armstrong, Carol and de Zegher, Catherine, Women Artists at the Millennium. Film theory debates the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to Reality, the other Arts individual Feminist film theory is theoretical Film criticism derived from Feminist politics and Feminist theory. Eye tracking is the process of measuring either the point of Gaze ("where we are looking" or the motion of an Eye relative to the head Eye contact is an event in which two people look at each other's Eyes at the same time The evil eye is a belief that the Envy elicited by the good Luck of fortunate people may result in their misfortune A staring contest is a Game in which two people stare into each other's Eyes and attempt to maintain Eye contact for a longer period of time Audience theory is an element of thinking that developed within academic Literary theory and Cultural studies. MIT Press, October Books, 2006.
- Ettinger, Bracha L. , "The Matrixial Gaze" (1994) reprinted as Chapter 1 in: The Matrixial Borderspace. University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
- Ettinger, Bracha L. , "Com-passionate Co-response-ability, Initiation in Jointness, and the link x of Matrixial Virtuality". In: Gorge(l). Oppression and relief in Art. Edited by Sofie Van Loo. Royal Museum of Fine Art. Antwerpen, 2006.
- Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Lacan: On the Gaze. " Introductory Guide to Critical Theory - see External links.
- Florence, Penny and Pollock, Griselda, Looking back to the Future. G & B Arts, 2001.
- Jacobsson, Eva-Maria: A Female Gaze? (1999) - see External links
- Kress, Gunther & Theo van Leeuwen: Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. (1996)
- Lacan, Jacques: Seminar One: Freud's Papers On Technique (1988)
- Lacan, Jacques:Seminar Eleven: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. NY & London, W. W. Norton and Co. , 1978.
- Lutz, Catherine & Jane Collins: The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes: The Example of National Geographic. (1994)
- Mulvey, Laura: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975, 1992)
- Pollock, Griselda (Ed. ), Psychoanalysis and the Image. Blackwell, 2006
- Notes on The Gaze (1998) - see External links.
- Paul, Nalini: The Female Gaze - see External links
- Schroeder, Jonathan E: Consuming Representation: A Visual Approach to Consumer Research.
- Theory, Culture and Society, Volume 21, Number 1, 2004.
- de Zegher, Catherine, Inside the Visible. MIT Press, 1996.
External links
- This is Not Sex: A Web Essay on the Male Gaze, Fashion Advertising, and the Pose, web essay about the male gaze in advertising
- Notes on The Gaze
- Robert Doisneau, Un regard Oblique, 1948 - another effective photograph illustrating gaze
- The Male Gaze, with photographs of several advertisements.
- Modules on Lacan: On the Gaze
- A Female Gaze?PDF (96. 7 KiB)
- The Female Gaze
- Salon Life - The Female Gaze
- Aux Fenêtres de l'âme (Windows of the Soul), a Ron Padova film
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